Signal Studios Launches The Sleeping Prince on iOS

Signal Studios and Tilting Point have launched The Sleeping Prince on iOS devices. The game sees players traveling to the kingdom of Cloudreach, whose inhabitants have all been placed under a sleeping spell by the evil Sydney Slime. The kingdom’s wizard is the only one to escape, and he gives players the ability to control the sleeping prince of the kingdom by flinging him around environments to collect crystals, defeat enemies and more in level-based gameplay.

In each level of The Sleeping Prince, players are challenged to guide the prince from one end of a side-scrolling stage to the other within a time limit (taking more time doesn’t necessarily mean an automatic failure, however). Both crystals and stars are scattered throughout each stage, and players are challenged with collecting these before completing levels as well. While players won’t fail a level if they fail to complete all three of a level’s particular objectives, they must complete at least one to progress. This one completion results in a bronze medal for the level, and so on.

Players can replay levels to earn missed medals, which is important, as unlocking additional groups of levels requires players to have earned specific amounts of different kinds of medals, where earning a gold counts for all three medals for that stage. For instance, one group of levels may be locked until players earn at least three silver medals overall.

While playing, gamers tap and swipe to fling the ragdoll-like prince around environments, or tap and hold to make him hover gently in the air. The prince isn’t entirely helpless, as he’ll automatically grab onto hooks in order to scale walls, pulleys that can be used to drag the prince across gaps too large for flinging, slingshots that can be used to fling him over large distances, and so on.

Gamers themselves also have an impact on levels, as they can tap on levers to open doors (or otherwise clear paths), tap on treasure chests to open them, and more. Treasure chests can contain crystals or power-ups.

Each interaction with the prince drains some of the wizard’s magic, but this can be recharged by finding magic orbs within levels. Players can also purchase powers before a level, including gem magnets and shields, with shields automatically slaying any nearby enemies without the need for a sword, as well as automatically activating levers and opening chests.

Players can even wake up the queen and king for extra help in certain areas. The queen can be dragged around the screen while holding the prince, to help him reach out-of-the-way areas, while the king can be used to break down otherwise immovable doors to access new locations. It should be noted, these characters cost crystals to use, but these are pulled from the gamer’s cumulative collection of crystals, and don’t take away from their progress in a stage.

If players do run out of magical energy in the middle of a level, they can either purchase refills with real money, or wait for this energy to recharge automatically over time. The latter option causes one to fail the level and have to try again.

Outside of gameplay, users can connect to Facebook to compete with their friends on the game’s leaderboards, or ask them to send some free magic their way.

“The Sleeping Prince is a unique game designed for touch-screen controls. We see the delight on players’ faces when they first lift and fling this ragdoll character across the screen, it’s unlike any other platforming experience on mobile,” said Colin Tennery, vice president at Signal Studios, in a release. “Our goal was to make something accessible for everyone to play, but still challenging and deep enough for more advanced gamers, too.”